1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to cassette tape recorders, and more particularly to a cassette tape recorder of the kind using a cassette including a housing which has an upper wall, a lower wall, a front wall, a rear wall, and a pair of side walls, and in which a magnetic tape wound around one of a pair of hubs supported freely rotatably between the upper and lower walls with one end thereof fixed to that hub is guided toward the other hub along a path extending adjacent to a plurality of openings bored in the front wall to be wound around the other hub with the other end thereof fixed to the latter hub, the tape being adapted to be fed at a predetermined take-up speed during recording and reproduction.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In conventional cassette tape recorders using such a cassette, a slide plate carrying thereon recording and reproducing elements including a pinch roller, a recording-reproducing head and an erase head is disposed immediately behind a group of actuating push buttons including a play button. In such a conventional cassette tape recorder, the cassette is mounted behind the recording and reproducing element with its front wall directed toward these elements, and the slide plate makes sliding movement toward the cassette in response to the actuation of the play button, so that a magnetic tape contained in the cassette can be fed at a predetermined take-up speed for recording or reproduction.
In this conventional cassette tape recorder, however, the cassette mounting position is remote from the actuating push button group, and the cassette must be mounted in the cassette mounting position by inserting the same across the actuating push button group and across the recording and reproducing elements including the pinch roller and magnetic heads. Therefore, it is not easy for the user to detect the amount of tape turns taken up on one of the hubs and to confirm the rotation of the hubs by merely looking in the cassette from the front side of the actuating push button group. The user feels thus quite inconvenient in that he must bring his eyes close to the cassette in confirming the internal state of the cassette. Especially, in a cassette deck of vertical type in which a cassette is mounted in an inclined state, such that the cassette carried on a cassette tray on the slope higher at the front wall side of the cassette than at the rear wall side thereof, namely the cassette is inclined to a vertical cassette insertion opening on a surface of a front panel of the cassette tape recorder, and the user can only look in the cassette from above the actuating push button group, he feels more inconvenient in confirming the internal state of the cassette since he cannot bring his eyes close to the cassette.